(1:42:31) The generation today don’t have the opportunity to learn the back country (warden) business. (In response to the question, “How did they warden service change over the years?) They don’t grow up around horses. Half of them couldn’t build a fire in a wood stove. If you are going to go out and live alone. You’ve got to be able to look after yourself. You got to be able to cook for yourself, you got to be able to keep busy, and you’ve got to have interests. You can’t read a book until 3:00 in the morning. You got to come home tired and you get up in the morning and you go to work. It’s got to be a business and it’s got to be something that you like. If you don’t like it, you can’t stay there. You are like that poor guy at Blue Creek who couldn’t deal with that bad bear…
(1:47:10) We had a warden that came to Banff by the name of Bert Rowe. Bert Rowe had been with Ole (Hermanrude) up there (at Healy Creek). He wasn’t a young man. He was 50 and he came up there (to Jasper) and he went to the Brazeau district after me. Bert was a dog guy. He had been in Manitoba, up in The Pas and here there and everywhere. He had a dog team and he had trapped…He couldn’t understand how anybody could be around out there and not have a dog because he was a dog man, like I was a horse guy. Anyway he was going to move from Banff up to Jasper, but he was poor and he borrowed my pickup to move his stuff. That was alright. He was a good guy and I was happy to loan it to him. So when he came back he brought the dog from Seebe, a dog from the Walt Disney program. He left it in Jasper with a friend of mine…I didn’t even know that he was going to do this. But he just thought that everybody should have a dog. So I had this female dog, a malamute, and the first thing I did was get her spayed. She was fine. She was a one man dog. But she was hard to control because she would chase things. She chased elk and she chased moose and she chased everything…I was looking for horses in the grass one time. I hadn’t had this dog for very long, she ran right up behind me when I was looking at horse tracks. I had a bridle in my hand and she was just right up behind me and I said, “What’s chasing you?” Then I realized what I said and here’s a moose right here, as close as you are! I hit this moose across the face with this bridle. Then as soon as I hit the moose, I hit the dog with the other swipe. The dog got away from me and went off because it didn’t like getting hit with the bridle and the moose took off after the dog again. But I had a lot of things like that happen to me with that dog. There were quite a few elk in the spring of the year, I had elk all around me, cows with calves and the dog was in amongst those things…When I was snowshoeing there and I was looking for horses in the winter, I kept a couple of saddle horses all the time when I was up there. I was going to move a bunch of these thin horses out of there in March and this dog was running around there…and I was in a patch up big timber…while I was doing this the dog got on a cougar track unbeknown to me and ran down to where this cougar was. This cougar chased this dog right out of there and chased it right up on the backs of my snowshoes. This cougar was from here to that chair from me. The hair standing up on it and the dog was scared to death. I kicked the dog away from me and I was quite happy the cougar ate the dog up, but didn’t want to eat me up! But anyway those things happen.
(1:51:45) Another one I was going to tell you…When I was in town…looking after the high use area not too long before I moved out of there, I got call that there was a grizzly on the golf course at the Jasper Park Lodge. It was in the middle of the afternoon, I think it was July or August. They have such a thing as a Totem Pole Golf Tournament. So this grizzly was over there…I jumped in my vehicle and I went over there and called Norman Woody. He was in town working, he was an experienced guy. He met me over there. This big grizzly was right around this portable kitchen and they had a hip of beef and they had buns and pickles, coffee and this kind of stuff. It was on a trailer sort of thing. This bear was around…as close as that bronze over there…He was a great big bear in good condition and he had a tag in his ear…He wasn’t ferocious he wasn’t mad yet, but he was very curious…I didn’t particularly like the look of him and heck there was 50 people there around that bear…You know how crazy people are around something like that. They thought they would pet him I guess. But anyway a couple of young wardens came along. We kind of worked this bear away from that picnic thing and away out there. I had a vehicle out there and a couple of times I worked at him with my pickup…Norman had a tranquilizing gun. He loaded it and he was good with a gun. He knew his business and one of the young guys went and brought a bear trap in there. We didn’t get this bear moved very quickly…we were going to ease this bear out of there. There is a fence on one side of the golf course to keep the elk off it in the wintertime. Norman had gone over there and opened the gate…These young guys were kind of staying away, they didn’t get too close and I was working this bear and I think I had a broom or something… I eased this bear up a little ways towards where Norman was…pretty soon he (the bear) got fed up with me. We were pretty near to where Norman was, within maybe 150 feet and the bear got mad. He took me and he was right on my ass! I ran as fast as I could and he (Norman) had one of those big heavy half tons with the big tires on it and that bear was chasing me and he was happy to see me run. I think he was having more fun than I was! But he was maybe only eight feet behind me and I am running as fast as I could. I ran right over the tail gate and right over the cab and he was right there looking at me and I am standing on the cab and Norman shot him with the tranquilizing gun…We skidded him into the bear trap. We put a rope on him and threaded it through and pulled him in there with the truck…That was as close as I want to get to a bear.
(1:57:04) At Maligne we had a few bad bears there too…Albert Norris, who worked the Skyline trail from Maligne over the top down to Jasper. He was gathering his horses one morning and he was right at my house. I was having breakfast and he was riding around there…He ran onto a grizzly that had killed a moose. It was 100 yards from my house, maybe less. He came down there and that bear wanted to get on the back of his horse with him! He was right there just chasing him. He was yelling and whipping on that horse and he came down into my yard. He was an old timer. He probably had a bear chase him before. I heard him yelling and swearing that’s why I went out there to see what was going on…Later we went and built a great big fire in there and burnt the carcass up because it was very close to the trail and my yard and park visitors!
(1:58:40) We had a plastic waterline that came down and supplied the concessions there (at Maligne Lake) with water. This size. A black line that came down a third of a mile from a little damn, a gravity feed. The bears used to walk up and down that pipeline. They’d bite holes in the plastic water line and it would lose its pressure. After we had that bad mauling there the (concession) staff didn’t want to travel up around there to (fix) it, so I used to do it. I had a horse that I used to ride that wasn’t scared of bears…I rode up and down the water line and taped the bite holes shut.
(2:00:33) Well, I’ve seen a lot of them (changes in the warden service over the years). Some of them haven’t been good, I call it blind progress. One of the things that is very sad is that they have kind of lost their feel for the land. The flora and fauna as they used to say. That is why we built a park, to protect what we’ve got. They have kind of forgotten about that now. This is why they built a park to maintain it and make wise use of it for future generations and they are not doing that. I also think when I look back on it (that) they need more of this generalist training. There is lots of people around now that can operate a computer and drive a truck and do things, but there really is a shortage of people in the system who can be a warden. Who can go out and know where they’ve been and know what they saw? I have gone back to Jasper and I’ve gone to some of the places and there is one particular place that I used to ride through years ago and it was a place where rams wintered…when I go back there, I’ll say to some of these guys “Do a bunch of rams winter in such and such a place?” They don’t know. I was telling you about these caribou, they don’t have any knowledge of these caribou because they don’t see them. If you are going to learn about that stuff you have to see them when they are migrating, coming or going or both and not just one year because sometimes the habits are different. What they do last year isn’t always what they do this year, also there is a noticeable lack of protection in the backcountry.
(2:03:39) I think just a little bit more generalization (is necessary for the future of warden service). One of my sayings now is that “Common sense is illegal!’
(2:04:02) I hope it will (In response to the question, “Do you think the warden service will return to its original mandate?) Things go in a circle. I hope it will come back. The thing that they have got to do…is they need to train these wardens in general things. When your dad, Keith Everts, was around and in my time when I became a manager, I used to try and pair these guys up. An old guy and a young guy. I needed it myself. Just so the old guy knew what was going on and the young guy did the paperwork.
(2:04:46) I’ll tell you another thing where this really came to mind. Bud Armstrong was the Chief in Jasper when I moved to town. Mickey had retired. Bud was a senior guy. He was a war veteran and he had been at Riding Mountain and Elk Island, then he went back to Riding Mountain which was a mistake. It’s a mistake for anybody to go back to where they’ve been. But he went back there…and they moved him down to Waterton for two or three years and then Jasper…I knew Bud from Elk Island and through the system. I said to him when he moved me into town and I was going to run that high use area. I said, “Bud, if I am going to take this job, the one thing that you’ve got to do for me is give me one of these young guys to look after the office and do that kind of thing to train me. I’ve never been in a damn office in my life. I’ve been in the field all my life, as a warden. Even before I was a warden I was in the field. I’ve been in the field for 15 years. That managing the operation from the outside doesn’t scare me a bit, but coming into an office and doing filing and doing this clerical work and even supervising clerical people, isn’t my ball game. I don’t have any experience” “Oh well” he said, “That’s okay, who do you want?” I said, “You know, if you give me who I want, I would take Dwayne Martin.” He said, “Well you can have him!” Dwayne had just come there and Dwayne had worked on one of the conservation crews. He was quite an academic guy and he was kind of a generalist too. He worked out 100% with me. I always kidded him about it when I saw afterwards and I still do…I always say, “By god Dwayne I did a pretty good job of you, because when you worked for me, for only for a year and a half or something, when I left you took my job! So I think that I must have done a pretty good job of training you!” I just kid him…but he was a perfect guy for me.
